Having recently read Dominique Moïsi’s much-adooed book The geopolitics of emotion, I confess to be disappointed.
Granted, the book has an interesting premise: feelings drive globalization. Linking Asia with hope, Europe with fear and the Middle East with humiliation, the French author claims that sentimental factors – not rational considerations – can explain the dynamics of our world. Moïsi includes in his work a compelling plea for tolerance among cultures. But this cannot make up for the analytical rigor his book lacks.
Tentative “theories of everything” displease me. From game theory to Huntington’s clash of civilizations, they have always upset me as wishful thinking at best and crude manipulation at worst. Can a single explanation really elucidate all human phenomena?
It is ultimately a matter of belief.
Alas, I am not a man of strong beliefs.
I never quite felt what Herr Freud called the oceanic feeling: a mystical sensation of appartenance. An awareness of one’s smallness. A sense of wonder. To put it simply: faith.
Instead of trusting a solo reason, I’d rather be a solo thinker. The world’s far too complex and life’s way too short. To seek a universal logic behind everything – God, History or Reason – is to miss the point.
Just let life be.
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